Articles by Herschel Smith

Burlington Free Press:

Vermont gun shop owners reacted with anger and disappointment Thursday to the new gun laws signed by Gov. Phil Scott on Wednesday …

Adam Nilson co-founded Atlas Gunworks in North Ferrisburgh in 2016, together with his partner, Tod West, making competition handguns that start at about $4,000. Nilson said his business has doubled its revenue each year, and that he expects to do $2 million in business this year. He has 8 employees.

But they might soon not be working here.

“We’re going to leave,” Nilson said. “It was hard enough to do business here when Vermont was gun-friendly. Seeing how fast they did what they did, the writing’s on the wall. We don’t feel welcome here.”

Gov. Phil Scott signed the new gun laws Wednesday in an outdoor public ceremony in front of the Statehouse, facing a hostile crowd of gun-rights activists, together with supporters of the legislation.

Nilson, who grew up in Colchester, said he’s considering moving to Tennessee, West Virginia or North or South Carolina, “somewhere where they’re gun friendly.”

[ … ]

Henry Parro, who supported Scott with a $200 donation to his campaign from his business, said he was going to “reserve comment” on the new gun laws until he gets an interpretation of the laws from his attorney.

Like Datillio, Parro said he has “thousands” of high capacity magazines that would become illegal after Oct. 1.

[ … ]

One of the provisions in the new laws requires universal background checks for private sales. People who want to transfer a gun privately must visit a federal firearms licensee for the background check. There are exceptions for immediate family members and law enforcement.

Pidgeon said he will not be offering background checks for private sales.

“Anger and disappointment?”  What?  Where were you guys earlier before this abomination was signed?  He told you he was going to do it.  How can you now be disappointed that he did what he said he would do?

At any rate, as I said before, move South like all other gun manufacturing.  The North will have nothing left.  That’s perfectly fine with me.  Rock River Arms, Mossberg, Remington, Kimber, Springfield Armory?  Why are you still there?

The great thing about the ban is that if law abiding and peaceable citizens can no longer get standard capacity magazines, neither can the criminals, and so everyone will be on a level playing field when it comes to home invasions.  And since there is now universal background checks, the criminals probably won’t even be able to get guns.

That’s true, right?  The criminals can’t get them, neither guns nor standard capacity magazines.  Right?  And a level playing field between peaceable men and criminals is a good thing, right?  Each has an equal chance of winning, statistically speaking?  Everybody will play fairly, right?

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Religious leaders across denominations spoke out in St. Louis on Wednesday against pending legislation that would allow concealed weapons in places of worship in Missouri without permission of the clergy.

“The bill would broaden Second Amendment rights at the expense of the First Amendment right of religious liberty,” said Most Rev. Robert Carlson, archbishop of St. Louis, who presides over some 500,000 Roman Catholics in the region.

What a strange thing.  The law doesn’t mandate that churches allow weapons, and since this is private property I support that because I support property rights.

What the law does is force them to post since this property usually comes with understood open invitations to join the services.  In other words, the “clergy” here doesn’t want the public to know their position, or at least be forced to wonder.

Perhaps they also don’t like the fact that in an ironic twist they are announcing the fact that they have decided to leave themselves without protection of any kind and thus a shooting gallery for would-be perpetrators.

I think it’s a wonderful thing that congregants and parishioners can now tell if they should enter at their own risk as soon as they set foot on the property.  I think it’s sad that the rest of the folk have been left with no protection.

These clergy aren’t clergy at all.  The churches are open sepulchers with dead men preaching to dead congregants.  They have no wisdom, no discernment, and couldn’t care less about the law of God, the pinnacle of which is the law of love, or protecting and caring for those around you.

Did a wonderful meetup with @WRSA tonight at my home.  He drove much farther than I would have liked to meet me face-to-face and for us to get to know each other better.  It’ll be my turn next time.

What a wonderful man, and wonderful time together.  We talked philosophy, theology, hardware, the state of things in our country, PT, our own history, and good cooking, among many other things.  And I think he enjoyed the chicken and broccoli casserole I made for him.

I’m very blessed that I have people in my life who would make efforts like that to meet me and get to know me.  While cyberspace is okay, it’s no replacement for face-to-face meetings, time together, and simple relaxation with friends.

You MUST do that with your friends, but also make a decided and determined effort to do that with those who are not as close as you would like.  You will need them in the future, and they you.

News4SA.com:

OLMOS PARK — The video has gone viral. Open Carry Texas President CJ Grisham and several other members were along the streets of Olmos Park protesting their right to carry a loaded gun.

Grisham and two other men were arrested by Olmos Park police, facing various charges including resisting arrest and assaulting a peace officer.

“He was legally carrying and they are drawing down on him like he is a terrorist, he had his hands up and he is backing away, which they will say he is resisting arrest, but doesn’t everyone back up from a threat,” said Open Carry Texas member Felix Cano.

Open Carry Texas says they were protesting a Olmos Park city ordinance that prohibited anyone other than law enforcement to carry a loaded rifle or shotgun on public streets. Thursday City Council voted unanimously to repeal that ordinance.

“The City of Olmos Park had from a long time ago put in place an ordinance that none of the current council members were involved with, regarding not allowing those two types of weapons to be loaded,” said Olmos Park City Council member Enzo Pellegrino.

Open Carry Texas says this was a victory for them.

“There shouldn’t be any more illegal arrests and throwing down Americans that are legally allowed to carry and putting other charges that don’t belong there,” said Cano.

“Open Carry Texas says this was a victory for them.”  Well I guess so.  It was indeed a victory for them.  I had followed this story from a distance, not knowing the back story behind it and not wanting to do the research necessary to understand it.

But this is the backstory.  It looks like the city of Olmos decided to engage in a little nullification themselves, being the little Napoleons they are.  Open carry is now legal in Texas, and while Olmos challenged that, Texas Open Carry decided to challenge Olmos.

Texas Open Carry won.  Good for them.  The city cannot make its own laws.

The Hill:

A Bank of America executive announced Tuesday that the bank will stop lending money to companies that manufacture “military-style” rifles that are available for civilians to purchase.

Anne Finucane, Bank of America’s vice chair, told Bloomberg TV that the bank doesn’t want to “underwrite or finance military-style firearms” and has told a number of gun manufacturers that it will no longer do business with them.

The bank has lended to the gun makers Vista Outdoor, Remington and Sturm Ruger, CNBC reported.

Bank of America had said that after the shooting in Parkland, Fla., in mid-February it was exploring ways it could contribute to stemming gun violence. The confessed gunman in that shooting used an AR-15-style rifle.

“These are clients we have enjoyed a relationship with,” Finucane said. “There are those I think will reduce their portfolios and we’ll work with them and others that will choose to do something else.”

Asked if Bank of America would stop doing business with retailers that sell assault weapons, Finucane said that would involve complicated issues dealing with civil liberties and the Second Amendment.

“That’s a good public dialogue, but that’s a ways off,” she said.

Finucane said that reaction from gun manufacturers to Bank of America’s decision has been mixed.

“Reduce their portfolios.”  That’s what the progressives at BoA want gun makers to do.  Reduce their portfolios.  Gun control by fiat via decisions in the banking industry.  Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear at some point that the FedGov was involved in meetings with BoA to encourage this decision.

Also take note that the notion of stopping business with retailers who do not comply deserves a “public dialogue,” and is “a ways off.”  In other words, it’s a step in the works but needs more time to ferment.  And it was two days ago I said this.

Now let’s turn to gun manufacturers.  Suppose that Ruger needs to spend $500,000 buying to tooling to replace old and worn tooling machinery, or to retool a line to fabricate a new product.  Suppose that none of the banks will do business with Ruger.  How does Ruger pay for the tooling machinery?  They can’t go through the bank.  They can’t hand cash to the machinery manufacturer – their accountant would reject it as making them look like they’re doing business with Iran.  No bank in their right mind will allow a company to deposit $500,000 cash without knowing where it came from.

I know accountants.  I maintain that no accountant can deposit a million dollars in cash with a bank teller.  It just doesn’t happen.  No, I’m not talking about drug deals in Florida or Texas or whatever other exception you can find.  I’m talking about people who pay their taxes, want to stay in business, and have to make it work with banks in order to stay above board.

This will prove to be very difficult for gun manufacturers to deal with.  And I maintain that this is just one step in the coming festivities over the next couple of years.  There will be further controls over gun owners as well.  You mark my words on that, whether at the local, state or federal level.  Bump stocks won’t be the last you hear of gun control by the Trump administration, all endorsed and given cover by the NRA.

Dallas News:

Months before President Donald Trump announced that he would ban bump stocks in the wake of the deadly Las Vegas mass shooting, Doug Alexander spent $300 on the accessory to show off at the gun range.

“I’ll be real honest with you, the bump stock, I bought it as a toy because it looked cool,” the Abilene resident and Air Force veteran said of the gun device that allows a semi-automatic rifle to fire at nearly automatic rates.

Although Alexander purchased the device legally more than a year ago, he’s now among tens of thousands of bump stock owners whose expensive accessories face an uncertain fate under a proposed federal ban of the devices.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimated that more than half a million people own bump stocks in a report released March 29 for the agency’s proposed bump stock ban. The report also found that 2,281 retailers and two bump stock manufacturers would be impacted by a ban. The proposal is expected to cost the industry, public and the government more than $200 million in a 10-year time span.

Alexander, a 61-year-old Dallas native, purchased his bump stock from Slide Fire, the country’s leading bump stock manufacturer based in the tiny Texas town of Moran, 40 miles east of Abilene.

“I thought it was cool that they were producing this, and I kind of figured I was helping the local economy, too,” he said.

ATF posted the proposed ban at the end of March, which requires a 90-day public comment period. The change would revise the agency’s definition of a machine gun to include “bump-stock-type devices,” despite a 2010 decision that determined bump stocks can’t be classified as a machine gun.

Under pressure after mass shootings around the country, Trump ordered the Justice Department and ATF to ban the devices. Bump stocks were found in the Las Vegas shooter’s hotel room, but they were not used in the Florida high school rampage in February or the massacre at the Sutherland Springs, Texas, church in November.

“Bump stocks are going to be gone,” Trump vowed last month.

Obama Administration legalized bump stocks. BAD IDEA. As I promised, today the Department of Justice will issue the rule banning BUMP STOCKS with a mandated comment period. We will BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2018

And you can bet that many gun owners feel the same way.  I told you – Trump is a one-termer because of this.  They separated him from his base.  And in doing so, the Congressmen and Senators managed to get the ban they wanted without having to go on record with a vote, thus opening themselves to the disapproval of the gun owning public.

The NRA gave him cover to do this.  You can blame the NRA, and you can blame Trump, who believes in nothing but himself.

Voice of Europe:

Wednesday night, about 20 Muslim migrants attacked a Christian congregation outside St. Mary’s church during the holy liturgy in Leukosia, Greece’s Pronews reports. 

Most of the Christians were inside the church when 20 Muslims suddenly arrived at the temple’s yard and began screaming, cursing, and beating the attendees.

According to statements given by locals at Sigma live news, one of the Muslims was waving an adze and tried to use it against members of the congregation. The Muslims disappeared after the police, called in by the terrorized believers, appeared on the scene.

The people of Cyprus live in agony, as the Orthodox Easter will be on the next Sunday. No one knows if a similar accident will happen again.

Europe is lost.  We all know that.  Christians have been led to the slaughter by their leaders who flooded the continent with savages, and who either never let them arm up or demanded that they disarm.

This is what happens.  The coming chaos and terror for Christians is unavoidable and nothing can be done to stop it.  They cannot even defend themselves.

As for Christians in America, there are many subdivisions, but the two most dangerous and debilitating are [1] those who believe that Jesus is returning to remove them from the chaos and set up a reign in Jerusalem, and [2] those who believe that Jesus called on them to be pacifists.

I don’t believe either one of the two positions.  There has never been a time in church history where God allowed His people to refuse to be salt and light, let the culture around them go to hell, and then snatch His people out of the trouble they caused by their recalcitrance.  There are consequences to disobedience, and those consequences create a wake of consequences for others.  We sleep in the bed we make.

And we’ve dealt with this ridiculous notion that Christ called on His people to be Bohemian hippie flower child pacifists.  It’s wrong, and dangerously so.  Holy warriors, armed and dispensing death to invaders, murderers and rapists is a much better example to follow.

But the two categories of Christians I mentioned are sleepwalking into catastrophe and slaughter.  They may wake up to find that their daughters are being raped when they don’t wear head cover, and their sons are being recruited for jihad.  Wake up, ye church.  Wake up from your slumber before it’s too late.

Abigail Hauslohner at The Washington Post:

Fabian Rodriguez was cradling his new rifle when he stopped at one of the gun-show booths to purchase a $5 chicken fajita MRE.

The “Meal Ready to Eat” is a mainstay for troops on combat missions. But Rodriguez, a 28-year-old San Antonio native who sells auto paint for a living, wasn’t going anywhere that would require one.

Fabian Rodriguez, 28, tries out his new AR-15 rifle at a shooting range in San Antonio.

“I like them,” he said. “Well, I like watching reviews of them. That’s something people do online, like, open them up and do taste tests.”

Rodriguez, who wears his handlebar mustache slicked into points and never leaves home without his cowboy boots, had come to the gun show to buy his first AR-15, a variant model of the M-16 and M-4 assault rifles that are used by the military, and currently the most popular rifle on the market.

[ … ]

The expanse of tables before him display AR-15s, AK-47s and every other sort of assault-style rifle; hefty shotguns and sleek, modern hunting rifles; handguns that range from high caliber Smith & Wessons to tiny Derringer guns that fit in the palm of your hand.

He makes his way past boxes of ammunition, T-shirts that say things like “CNN IS FAKE NEWS,” and a $1,900 Magnum Desert Eagle that he immediately recognizes as the gun Angelina Jolie carried in the movie “Tomb Raider.” “That specific one she used in the movie was 50-caliber, which is humongous,” he says.

He finds a strap for his AR, and a quick-disconnect for the strap. He inquires about left-handed adjustments and revisits the table where yesterday he purchased an AR-15 magazine engraved with the “Don’t tread on me” snake logo, just like the one pictured on the worn leather wallet that he is now again removing from his pocket.

“Can I still get that discount if I bought one yesterday?” he asks the vendor.

“Yeah, the two for $35?”

Rodriguez nods.

“I remember you,” the vendor adds, as Rodriguez hands him the cash for another magazine, this one engraved with the words, “You can’t protect the First without the Second.

[ … ]

The NSSF, an association of gun manufacturers and sellers — which several years ago started calling ARs “modern sporting rifles” — likes to hype the idea of the AR’s versatility as the key to its appeal: a gun for hunting, home security and whatever else you might need.

David Chipman, who used to carry an AR-15 for his job as a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, thinks there’s more to it.

“I would compare it to the same reason Americans might want a muscle car or enjoy a muscle car: It’s American-made, it has outsized power,” said Chipman, who left ATF after a 25-year career and now serves as a senior policy adviser to the gun-control advocacy group Giffords.

There’s a sort of “X-Game-type sensibility” to it, he said, a fixture of “American culture that I see most often with men.”

Rodriguez encounters plenty of skeptics in addition to his mother who ask him why anyone would need so many guns, particularly a semiautomatic rifle like an AR-15 — a gun that can fire 45 high-velocity rounds per minute, bullets that travel so fast that their shock waves mimic an explosion as they enter a body.

His honest answer: He doesn’t need them.

He wants them because he enjoys them, and the Constitution gives him the right to have them.

“I know I don’t need it,” he says of the AR-15. “The revolver, statistically speaking, is more than enough to defend myself.”

But it’s frustrating when people ask him this, because that’s not the point.

The point is that the Second Amendment protects his right to bear arms, whatever and however many he wants, as a guard against tyranny.

Hmm … there’s nothing comparable to getting an “authority” like a former ATF agent to say that there’s some mystique about the gun, alluring, tempting, tantalizing, beckoning people who otherwise wouldn’t want them to come, come, come to me, dear soul, and shoot me.  I can make your life complete.

Good God, what claptrap.  It’s as if Abigail has gone on a quest to hunt the snark, to find the great unwashed dirt people who eat beef, wear cowboy boots and hats, work an hourly job, get their hands dirty, run tooling equipment, run horses and cattle, drive trucks, and so on the list could go.  She’s heard that such people exist, but never actually met one inside the beltway.

Ooo … an expanse of tables with guns and ammo, tee shirts, and stupid bumper stickers.  And the allure and beckon of guns and money exchanging hands.  It’s as if there is actually private enterprise going on in America.

Give me a call, honey.  I can take you up to where they make corn liquor and don’t take kindly to FedGov sticking their nose around.  And you can shoot an AR-15 too.  Wouldn’t you enjoy that?  It’s the next logical step for you.

Seriously, gun owners know the first rule of gun club, which is that you don’t talk about gun club to the MSM.  That’s why gun data on ownership is so crappy.  Most gun owners aren’t going to talk, or if they do, they aren’t going to tell the truth.  Every now and then a MSM writer finds a gullible dunce like this to follow around.

Remember folks, the first rule of gun club is that you don’t talk about gun club to the MSM.  You only talk about gun club to make other gun owners among the potential recruits.

Via reddit/r/firearms.

Removing dangerous items from the poor folks in the UK, while they protect Pakistani rape gangs for 20 years.  And doing so without any shame.

I am neither a prophet nor son of a prophet (2 Kings 2:3).  If I’m wrong, no one stands to lose anything.  But if I’m right, we might all be headed for rough times ahead.

There is such a proliferation of gun control and ammunition control articles, commentaries, editorials and laws that it would be impossible to mention them all, let along discuss them.  Boulder has just announced a new assault weapons ban.  The LA Times advocates ammunition regulation, Smith & Wesson will soon be under pressure from its parent company, Black Rock Investment is pimping gun free investments, a recent challenge to the Massachusetts assault weapons ban has fallen, bump stocks will soon be illegal, the Las Vegas Sun is publishing letters advocating the confiscation of ammunition, and the News Tribune published a reader who wants to tax ammunition more heavily.

I was in the Bass Pro Shop recently and looked at ammunition. I noticed that a box of 9mm bullets, 50 rounds, cost exactly the same as I paid for it in high school in the early 1990s — $10 to $15.

How is it that ammunition has totally escaped inflation? Perhaps state officials should add a 10-cents per round tax that would go to fund school security and mental health services.

I have made this suggestion to all 27 local legislators as well as Congressman Derek Kilmer but have received no substantive response, just a form letter.

Note that to the reader, if ammunition makers have held costs in check (although I doubt he remembers it correctly), that’s a reason to tax them more, not celebrate the free market.

We could go on for hours and hours over this.  The point is that something has snapped in American culture, and we are being put in a pincer movement.  Consider this thought experiment.

Suppose that an assault weapons ban happens in your AO, or suppose it’s just standard capacity magazines.  Are you stocked like you would want to be?  Suppose that it requires a background check to purchase ammunition in the future in your AO.  Is your stock where you want it to be?

Now let’s turn to gun manufacturers.  Suppose that Ruger needs to spend $500,000 buying to tooling to replace old and worn tooling machinery, or to retool a line to fabricate a new product.  Suppose that none of the banks will do business with Ruger.  How does Ruger pay for the tooling machinery?  They can’t go through the bank.  They can’t hand cash to the machinery manufacturer – their accountant would reject it as making them look like they’re doing business with Iran.  No bank in their right mind will allow a company to deposit $500,000 cash without knowing where it came from.

This could all happen to Ruger without a new law being passed, since CEOs can do what they want, and corporations are in the main controlled by progressives and lawyers.  Furthermore, when bans happen, we’ll all have to decide where we stand, and some of us will have to turn “gray man” in order to live and work in our communities and continue to have a job.  Not everyone can be a very public figure like Mike Vanderboegh was.

Unless the culture makes a U-turn very quickly – and I don’t think it will – we are in for some hard times ahead and we will all have to make difficult choices.  Put on your thinking caps, stock your supplies, watch your six, consider your options, and make sure of your friends.